English: This newly restored 42-year-old image of Earth was released by NASA. The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft took the iconic photograph of Earth rising above the lunar surface in 1966. Using refurbished machinery and modern digital technology, NASA produced the image at a much higher resolution than was possible when it was originally taken. The data may help the next generation of explorers as NASA prepares to return to the moon.

{{Information |Description={{en|1=This newly restored 42-year-old image of Earth was released by NASA. The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft took the iconic photograph of Earth rising above the lunar surface in 1966. Using refurbished machinery and modern digita

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1.
Ampex
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Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, at one time public, the remaining ongoing business unit was acquired by Delta Information Systems in October 2014, with the original parent, Ampex Corporation, ceasing operations in October 2014. Ampexs first great success was a line of tape recorders developed from the German wartime Magnetophon system at the behest of Bing Crosby. Ampex quickly became a leader in audio technology, developing many of the analog recording formats for both music and movies that remained in use into the 1990s. They also introduced multi-track recording, slow-motion and instant playback television, Ampexs tape business was rendered obsolete during the 1990s, and the company turned to digital storage products. They never managed to become a player in this field, russian inventor Alexander Matthew Poniatoff established the company in San Carlos, California, in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The name came from his initials plus ex to avoid using the name AMP already in use, during World War II, Ampex was a small manufacturer of high quality electric motors and generators for radars that used alnico 5 magnets from General Electric. Ampexs first offices were at 1313 Laurel St. San Carlos California, near the end of the war, while serving in the U. S. Army Signal Corps, Major Jack Mullin was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics experiments. He discovered the Magnetophons with AC biasing on a trip to Radio Frankfurt, the device produced much better fidelity than shellac records. Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of BASF Type L tape, and brought them to America and he demonstrated them to the Institute of Radio Engineers in San Francisco on May 16,1946. Bing Crosby, a big star on radio at the time, was receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs and he disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. This may have been what Crosby was hoping to avoid, as that was the argument Crosby used with the network when he asked to use transcription disc recordings of his show. Those recordings were made directly from the live east coast show, in June 1947, Mullin, who was pitching the technology to the major Hollywood movie studios, got the chance to demonstrate his modified tape recorders to Crosby. When Crosby heard a demonstration of Mullins tape recorders, he saw the potential of the new technology. Ampex was finishing its prototype of the Model 200 tape recorder, after a successful test broadcast, ABC agreed to allow Crosby to pre-record his shows on tape. Crosby immediately appointed Mullin as his engineer and placed an order for $50,000 worth of the new recorders so that Ampex could develop a commercial production model from the prototypes. Crosby Enterprises was Ampexs West Coast representative until 1957, the companys first tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200A, was first shipped in April 1948. The first two units, serial numbers 1 and 2, were used to record the Bing Crosby Show

2.
Lunar Orbiter 1
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The Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, was the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It was designed primarily to photograph areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, the spacecraft was placed in an Earth parking orbit on August 10,1966, at 19,31 UTC. The trans-lunar injection burn occurred at 20,04 UTC, the spacecraft experienced a temporary failure of the Canopus star tracker and overheating during its cruise to the Moon. The star tracker problem was resolved by navigating using the Moon as a reference, Lunar Orbiter 1 was injected into an elliptical near-equatorial lunar orbit 92.1 hours after launch. The initial orbit was 189.1 by 1,866.8 kilometers and had a period of 3 hours 37 minutes, on August 21, perilune was dropped to 58 km and on August 25 to 40.5 km. The spacecraft acquired photographic data from August 18 to 29,1966 and it also took the first two pictures of the Earth ever from the distance of the Moon. Accurate data were acquired from all other experiments throughout the mission, orbit tracking showed a slight pear-shape of the Moon based on the gravity field, and no micrometeorite impacts were detected. The spacecraft was tracked until it impacted the surface on command at 7 degrees north latitude,161 degrees east longitude on the Moons far side on October 29,1966

3.
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project
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The first image to be successfully recovered by the project was released in November 2008. It was the first photograph of the Earth from the Moon, on February 20,2014, the project announced it had completed the primary tape capture portion of the project. One medium resolution image, most of one high resolution image, the rest of the Lunar Orbiter images have been successfully recovered and are undergoing digital processing before being submitted to NASAs Planetary Data System. The images taken by the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were used to locate landing sites for the manned Apollo missions. Once those missions were over, the data, on about 1,500 tapes, was forgotten since it had served its purpose. The original tapes were carefully archived for 20 years by the government in Maryland and she decided that the tapes should be preserved. She recalled, I could not morally get rid of this stuff, within a few years, Nancy Evans and a few colleagues were able to start a small project with funding from NASA. They managed to find four rare Ampex FR-900 tape drives—highly specialized drives that had only used by government agencies such as the FAA, USAF. Over time, Evans team also collected documentation and spare parts for the drives from various government surplus sources. They attempted to get funding from NASA and private sources to build the hardware, eventually, both Nancy Evans and Mark Nelson went on to other projects while the tape drives sat in Nancy Evans garage. In 2004, Philip Horzempa was doing research on the Lunar Orbiter program at the NASA History Office in Washington, in the archives, he happened to come across a memo from 1996 containing a proposal by Mark Nelson to digitize the Lunar Orbiter images, as described above. After about a year of searching, Horzempa was able to contact with Mark Nelson. The two of them decided to restart the Lunar Orbiter tape recovery effort and find funding and they made contact with Jen Heldmann of NASA Ames. In early 2007, Horzempa commented on the Lunar Orbiter tape recovery effort on a Web forum, as a result, Dennis Wingo contacted Philip Horzempa through that forum. Horzempa put Wingo in contact with Nelson and Evans and invited Wingo to join the team, in addition to the tape drives mentioned above, Nelson had been able to obtain several tape heads. The tape drives were essential to any effort to read the original Lunar Orbiter data tapes. Dennis Wingo is president of the engineering company SkyCorp and a long-time veteran of space. Wingo said, I knew the value of the tape drives, another group thought the same, writing, future missions to the Moon have re-energized the lunar community and renewed interest in the Lunar Orbiter data

4.
Lunar Orbiter program
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The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five unmanned lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moons surface, all five missions were successful, and 99% of the Moon was mapped from photographs taken with a resolution of 60 meters or better. The first three missions were dedicated to imaging 20 potential manned lunar landing sites, selected based on Earth-based observations and these were flown at low-inclination orbits. The fourth and fifth missions were devoted to broader scientific objectives and were flown in high-altitude polar orbits. Lunar Orbiter 4 photographed the entire nearside and 9% of the far side, all Lunar Orbiter craft were launched by an Atlas-Agena D launch vehicle. The Lunar Orbiters had an ingenious imaging system, which consisted of a camera, a film processing unit, a readout scanner. Both lenses, a 610 mm narrow angle high resolution lens, the axes of the two cameras were coincident so the area imaged in the HR frames were centered within the MR frame areas. The film was moved during exposure to compensate for the spacecraft velocity, the film was then processed, scanned, and the images transmitted back to Earth. During the Lunar Orbiter missions, the first pictures of Earth as a whole were taken, the first full picture of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 8 August 1967. A second photo of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 November 1967, the Boeing-Eastman Kodak proposal was announced by NASA on 20 December 1963. The main bus of the Lunar Orbiter had the shape of a truncated cone,1.65 m tall and 1.5 m in diameter at the base. The spacecraft was composed of three decks supported by trusses and an arch, four solar panels were mounted to extend out from this deck with a total span across of 3.72 m. Also extending out from the base of the spacecraft were a high gain antenna on a 1.32 m boom, above the equipment deck, the middle deck held the velocity control engine, propellant, oxidizer and pressurization tanks, Sun sensors, and micro-meteoroid detectors. The third deck consisted of a shield to protect the spacecraft from the firing of the velocity control engine. The nozzle of the engine protruded through the center of the shield, mounted on the perimeter of the top deck were four attitude control thrusters. Power of 375 W was provided by the four solar arrays containing 10,856 n/p solar cells which would run the spacecraft. The batteries were used during periods of occultation when no solar power was available. Propulsion for major maneuvers was provided by the velocity control engine